Hi Fasterbusa
Welcome back to WinMX..
First of all its the RIAA. Recording Industry Association of America, second they sent the makers of WinMX a letter on or around Sept 2005 threatening them with litigation's. Rather then face that (as you know WinMX Technologies never made any profit from WinMX) they elected to close the caches we all used to connect and they have since disappeared.
By Sept 23rd the Users had working caches set up. Thats what happened... Now..
There are indeed newer versions of WinMX, the most recent being a beta released 12-12-2004 WinMX v3.54 beta 4, the most stable version to date. The versions have nothing to do with 'contacting' the RIAA. They are in use my most users now and are totally safe when used with the WinMX Group Patches.
Pie is an outdated method of connection via a hosts file. Which was used temporarily in the early days to allow folks redirection to the new Caches. Its no longer recommended as its leaves both the user and the network unprotected. The real threat from the RIAA now, you can read more about by clicking
HERE. Because the Hosts file is an outdated method of connection, and because the WinMX Group patch utilizes a better method of redirection you should only see 1 entry in your Hosts file that pertains to
www.winmx.com and that is solely for your update bar. All true patching functions are located in the files placed in the WinMX Folder.
WinMX has never used, ok.. well since it stopped being strictly an OpenNap client, Its not ever used a server struct. Read more about how WinMX works by clicking
HereI have no idea what you mean by your question about "Who decides what computers are hosting the host name ip names. ie doman names?" I feel you must be misunderstanding how the WPN works.
The entry in your hosts file.. again.. is a redirect for your Update bar only and has nothing to do with actual patch functions.
PS.
WinMX is not and has never been open source and Kevin Hearn, who has always owned WinMX.exe and source, is as mentioned above missing in action.
Im pretty sure cars and WinMX don't speak quite the same language..mostly because cars don't need p2p type functions if you have other questions Im sure someone can help you here.